It seems that I am going to log a decent month’s worth of flying in September. We are making the most of the lack of restrictions and enjoying the freedom of being able to travel anywhere we want.
| Date | Aircraft | Route | Flight Time | Total Time |
| 19 September2020 | ZU-IBM | FAGM(Rand) – FASY(Baragwanath) – Florence Guest Farm – FAGM | 2.7 | 220 |
We’ve been meaning to go to the Florence Guest Farm at Chrissiesmeer for some time now – the last few times we’ve tried we have been unable due to low clouds. The Eastern part of the highveld plateau in South Africa is plagued by morning mist almost throughout the year due to adiabatic cooling of moist air flowing in from the Indian Ocean.
However, on this instance we were to be blessed with fantastic weather. Roger and I are both in the same hangar so we set off more or less together to Baragwanath to pick up Matthew in the Mooney. Once the usual suspects were reunited we set off East for Chrissiesmeer. We’ve figured out the timing pretty well now – if I leave first then Matthew in the Mooney 5-10min later and then Roger in the Arrow 10 minutes later, we will all arrive at more or less the same time.
It was actually a beautiful morning for flying – so smooth in fact that my 14y old was delegated poling duties and he did a pretty good job – the difficulties of VFR in the morning haze notwithstanding. He is going to want to learn to fly so he might as well get some stick time and the advantage of doing it from the right seat is that there is less ability to rely on the instruments for attitude.
With ATC helpfully providing separation info between the three of us we made it to Chrissiesmeer in good time. The hamlet is known as the Okavango of South Africa which I think is pushing it a little, but there certainly are a large number of lakes in the area, and it is very pretty from the air. I suspect in summer it is even prettier as the winter landscape can be somewhat drab.
I was last to land having flown a very long downwind to give the others time to backtrack on the grass runway. These rural airstrips in South Africa almost always seem to have large eucalyptus trees on the undershoot which are always good for focusing your attention on glide path discipline – no dragging it in here…
The runway is well kept but in all honesty, its really pretty bumpy and the left side is quite unkempt. Backtracking, we parked up next to the other two aircraft and set off in search of breakfast.
Despite arranging for breakfast to be available the staff were somewhat nonplussed at our arrival but they quickly whipped up a reasonable egg and bacon breakfast while we had a look around. The venue is marketed as a wedding type place with some overnight accommodation – it looks like a great spot for the quick overnight escape from the city and we’ll put it on the list of potential destinations for this sort of trip.
With the obvious exception of the actual flying the best part of these breakfast runs is sitting around and chatting while eating breakfast. After breakfast I was able to fly the drone a bit (after making sure there was no traffic in the area!) and then we set off home. There was some discussion about heading to the EAA Taildraggers flyin at FAWA but since we’re all blessed with nosewheels we decided to give it a miss and head straight back to Rand.
Later that afternoon the first thunderstorms of the season struck but at midday when we were flying back we were very aware of the convective activity – this was easily the worst turbulence since my flight back from Cape Town – we couldn’t find a comfortable level and had one or two of those ‘bang your head on the ceiling and dislodge your headset type moments’. It’s always entertaining when ATC asks why you’re 200ft above your planned cruise level when you’re at idle throttle, 7degrees nose down with a 900fpm climb rate.
We landed at Rand about 10minutes before the first storm rolled through (from the other direction) and stuffed the plane into the hangar. Summer is definitely on it’s way and flying needs to start happening earlier!
